_Your isle, which stands_
_As Neptune’s, ribbed and paled in with rocks unscalable._
—Cymbeline.
[Illustration]
Second-hand breakfasts, made from the ruins of supper, are never
pleasant. It is less pleasant to meet the cold, damp, gray dawn without
even the satisfaction of awakening from sleep. Our second morning in
Cuba,—we stolidly watched the dark sky turn into tawny streaks and
gradually brighten into daylight. We ate a few crackers and gnawed at
a few left-over guinea hen bones, with tea, brewed in a tin cup, for
a chaser. We were impatient for the sun to drive the chill out of the
morning and out of our bones.
Now we faced the toughest proposition we ever had met; so we dodged
it. Easier than trying to climb the bluffs that blocked the way was a
circuitous route over the top of a wind-blown, grass-covered hill in
somebody’s field. We broke down the stone fence, drove the car through,
and dashed over these fields, skipping from one hill to another. At last
we brought up at the back door of the house of Govin. He gave us advice
and bananas, both of which we swallowed as fast as we could.
Bananas in Cuba are fine; advice is poor. We were in the center of
a magnificent panorama of hills, very green, and fringed with palms
that reached the horizon and seemed to be everlasting. Señor Govin had
selected his home well. It was a beautiful and wonderful country. Also,
it was the third of January and the now scorching sun had warmed us to
the continuance of our fight against the rocks. Courage had returned
and we were willing to accept whatever Cuba had to offer in the way of
highway difficulties.
What happened the day before we forgot. There is no time to remember,
when journeying as we journeyed. The new difficulties are so rapidly
encountered that each experience wipes out the recollection of the
previous one. With a good-bye from Señor and a smiling adios from Señora,
we ran down a long, clay-covered lane to the stone-floored valley, which
was the only road there was to follow. That day we took the measure of
our ability to strike the first two letters off the word impossible.
We discovered a new kind of hill—a hill like a natural stairway of great,
rough limestone steps. It was steep enough to be an almost impossible
climb, even had it been smooth. At the left was a deep gorge on whose
bottom wound the rusty rails of the Havana Central. On the right was a
plowed field, crossed by gullies and covered with stones.
[Illustration: “_The clearance of an ox cart is thirty-eight to
forty-eight inches._”
SEE PAGE 33.]
[Illustration: “_At Jaruca, the whole town joined us at luncheon._”
SEE PAGE 38.]
Stones, by the way, do not affect agriculture. The soil grows its crop
whether cleared of stones or not. They hitch a squad of bulls onto a plow
and literally rip up the face of the earth. Then they plant sugar cane.
After a while they come around with machetes and cut it down. Next they
load it, in half-ton bunches, on ox carts and haul it to the mill. If the
roads become worse, by the deepening of the immense ruts, they put on
higher wheels and more oxen.
The clearance of an ox cart is thirty-eight to forty-eight inches. When
it is wet the carts sink into the earth up to the hubs. They travel in
groups, so that when an extremely bad place is reached, the oxen from
several carts may be hitched onto each cart in succession. It takes from
four to twelve oxen to pull an ordinary cart.
We surveyed that particular hill from all angles, reconnoitering the
railway track, the fields, and the hill itself. A native, who happened
along, showed us how to cut off the tail of a scorpion with a machete
so that he becomes a safe companion. There are scorpions under most of
the rocks and there are lots of rocks. Centipedes are correspondingly
numerous. We climbed the hill itself, filling the jutting surfaces of
the step-like rocks with loose stones and, then, driving up the rough,
perilous incline by sheer power.
Next we found that getting down the opposite side of some of these
stepped hills was likely to be harder than getting up. They are so steep
that the car slides with the wheels locked. Once we had to fasten a rope
to the rear end of the car, give it a couple of turns around a palm tree
and let the car go bumping down, a yard at a time. At one place we were
lucky enough to find a couple of planks which had been used to bridge a
shallow creek, so we drove down the hill by using the planks for skids
from one step to the next.
Our first ford was a wide, shallow stream with a hard rock bed. Through
the clear rippling water of this first river the car shot with a great
splurge and spreading of white spray. We had dreaded the rivers which had
been pictured to us as impassable. By this stream was a country grocery,
in front of which lounged a rural guard. We asked him if this was a
typical river. He laughed and started to tell us about deep torrents
that flowed over beds of stone, between wall-like cliffs. We changed the
subject and dickered with him for his machete, with which he claimed to
have killed seven Spaniards during the last war.
Rural guards are near soldiers. They get more money than United States
regulars and wear better clothes, with celluloid collars that are wiped
clean every day. They carry machetes and revolvers. They will sell either
or both. They ride good ponies and go to country dances. They are not
impressive.
[Illustration: “_Through the clear rippling water of this first river the
car shot with a great splurge._”
SEE PAGE 34.]
The route continued an interesting one. There are more kinds of trail in
a half day’s journey in Cuba than there is in going from Hell’s Gate to
the Golden Gate. A comparatively level stretch of red dirt, strewn with
boulders, suddenly leaves off in a tract of grass where the route is
marked only by stone fences. Where the red soil is hard, the travel is
not extremely difficult, the principal obstruction being loose stones,
which must be dodged. The same dirt, soaked up by a heavy rain, becomes
a bottomless mire. In some places there is nothing to follow but a path
through high-growing sugar cane. In other places, unless the ground is
seamed with deep ruts by the continuous travel of heavy ox carts in wet
weather, the only thing which signifies a traveled path will be the
country stores. Some of these are in board houses. Most of them are
merely thatched huts. They all keep a little supply of vile liquors and
canned meats. At some of them it is possible to buy oranges and bananas.
During those scorching days, with infrequent opportunities to get good
drinking water, we quenched our thirst with the juice of many oranges.
They are little ones, but cheap and good. We bought them by the dozen and
threw them loosely into the folded top, back of the tonneau. Bananas we
ate immediately upon purchase. The tree-ripened bananas of Cuba are very
thin skinned and delicious, but one hour in the sun spoils them.
Our second morning’s work, to relate, would appear to be the tale of a
long journey. As a matter of fact, we laboriously worked our way over the
rocks for a few miles to Jaruca, where we stopped for lunch. Jaruca was
our first interior village. We had passed no towns since leaving Havana.
We got our initial experience of a typical inland meal and started in
learning to like the peculiar style of cooking which is partly Spanish,
partly devilish, and ninety-five per cent. grease.
The main thing to eat is a pottage of beans and meat, fried bananas and
chicken or guinea, cooked with rice. In the large towns or in places
near the rivers or along the coast, there is always fish. The bread is
good everywhere. It comes in small individual loaves and is so greatly
“shortened” that it needs no butter, which is a good thing. There is no
butter, except the canned stuff shipped in from the United States. This
is impossible. It looks like melted vaseline. We did not taste it.
At Jaruca, the whole town joined us at luncheon. Only those who had
been to Havana had seen an automobile and some of them had never heard
of one. They were all timid. In addition to which, we were Americans.
The interior Cubans have a very sensible respect for los Americanos.
They are frank in their inspection of a stranger. At the café, where
we sat at a corner table almost on the sidewalk, we were surrounded by
the closely packed populace, that carefully examined our make-up, from
toes to turbans, and discussed us in Spanish. Those who did not stick by
us during the meal clustered about the car. Hunger is a preventive of
embarrassment. Besides, we broke even with the town by scaring it out of
its wits with an exhibition of fast and fancy driving on the way to the
edge of the village.
That afternoon we made good use of our hatchet. Many times there would
be several drops, or great depressions, in the rock and at each place
we would have to cut down underbrush alongside the path that we might
get around the hole. Much of the driving was in deep trenches where the
travel of many ox carts had worn the ruts into a ditch. For hundreds of
yards we drove between these close walls of dirt, where the grass-covered
ground, on either side, rose higher than the car. This ditch, winding
past rows of huts in which lived sugar plantation laborers, debouched now
and then into open territory, where the road was any feasible way among
the shrubs, rocks, palms, and ruts.
We began to tire under the hard work and were glad that the sun was
sinking rapidly toward the line of hills back of us. We hoped to reach
suitable shelter before dark, for we needed a night of real sleep. We
struck the first river of consequence, and one of us waded through it to
find out where and how we might cross. It was not difficult, but this was
not the region of rivers. We had yet to cross the ones of which we had
been warned.
Rivers down there are both a blessing and a curse. They stop traffic and
they stop thirst. There are but few wells. We struck one artesian well
which supplied water for many square leagues. A league, incidentally, has
its own meaning, being a colloquial measure of about a mile and a half,
instead of the usual three miles implied by the marine kind. Most of the
drinking water comes from the rivers. It is carried away in cans or water
jars. The former are principally five-gallon kerosene cans saved for the
purpose. It is not very good water and, unless obtained at a store, is
given one to drink from a porron.
A porron is a Spanish-made clay bottle with an opening at the top,
through which to fill it, and a small nozzle on one side, through which
to empty it. The use of the porron is the only visible evidence of
cleanliness on the island. It is against all etiquette and many rules to
touch the spout to the lips. You simply aim as well as you can and hit
your mouth as often as you can.
We ended our journey at Benavides. Benavides is a dot on the map. In
reality, it is a board hut, yclept grocery. We had fought our way
thirty-four miles. Hungrily impatient, we waited in the stone-flagged
main room of the house for a much-fried supper. We ate it by the glimmer
of a side lamp. Around the dirty table at which we sat, collected all
the inhabitants of the house, and a dozen others who must have lived
somewhere but who appeared and disappeared in a mysteriously dramatic
fashion.
It was a dismal meal and a poor one and we were cross. We were glad to
creep onto the wire spring cots which they spread for us in a partially
enclosed corner of the hut. That night we accrued some more wisdom about
touring in Cuba. We undressed, for we had not yet learned our part, but
that was the last time we were so foolish, except one joyous night when
we put up at a regular hotel in the real city of Santa Clara.
Each of us had, underneath, a wire mattress, and, on top, a starched
sheet. Cold air rushed through the meshes of the woven wire, for the
night was a chill one, while the starched sheet felt like the dank sides
of a sepulchre. Outside, innumerable pigs grunted between the several
acts of a protracted dog fight, and the chickens, which roosted in the
house, fluttered from one corner of the room to another; the many fleas
were still bolder.
There is an intimacy about living things in Cuba which is somewhat
appalling to a man who has been more or less used to picking his
associates, or, at least, his family. Cats, dogs, chickens, and pigs are
welcome in the household. The children sit on the floor and quarrel with
each other and with the dogs. It is not infrequent to find a hut which
has its household snake. There are no poisonous snakes on the Isle de
Cuba, but there is a large brand which looks as if it would like to be
poisonous if it knew how. Just as the family dog, in Illinois, protects
the house against burglars, so the family snake in Santa Clara Province
protects the house against rats—but this is not a tale of grewsome things.
Each successive night had its elements of humor, but that night at
Benavides we had not yet arisen to the greatness of mind and broadness of
character which permitted us to enjoy the humorous phases of the evening.
We rolled around on our cots to change the water marks which the wire
mattress made in our skin, and tried to sleep during the brief intervals
between occasions when it was necessary to awake and pull the sheets back
onto us. If all of the other fellows had the same shrinkage of the soul
which I experienced that night (and, out of fairness to myself, I think
they did), the expedition came awfully close to needing an epitaph.
Camp Solitude to Benavides—thirty-four miles.
[Illustration: “_We drove under the everlasting palms and among boulders
half-hidden in the luxuriant grass._”
SEE PAGE 50.]
[Illustration]